Self Portrait in Charcoal
by ChicaFrom3
Summary: Michael Dawson reflects on his current Island situation. MichaelSun overtones. What Kate Did spoilers. Oneshot.


**_TITLE:_** Self-Portrait in Charcoal  
**_AUTHOR:_** Kristen Kilar (chickadee(underscore)from(underscore)3(at)yahoo(dot)com)  
**_RATING:_** PG-13. Angst. A bit of language. Implied sex.  
**_DISCLAIMER:_** Not mine and never will be, oh so sadly.  
**_ARCHIVE:_** Just ask, I'd love to give permission.  
**_SUMMARY:_** Michael Dawson reflects on his current Island situation.  
**_SPOILERS:_** Up through the end of "What Kate Did".  
**_PAIRINGS:_** unresolved Michael/Sun. Jin/Sun. Slight Charlie/Claire and Shannon/Sayid.  
**_AUTHOR'S NOTES:_** Why don't the nice guys get more fandom attention? Share the Michael love.  
As always, adoration and accolades to my beta, niki blue.

* * *

They're happy together.

Michael is proud of himself for being able to admit that.

Sun and Jin are happy together.

They have a right to be.

They're married.

And Jin is his friend now. It's not like it was in the beginning, when they were suspicious of each other, when he almost died for a watch, when he thought Jin was abusive of Sun, when he thought she needed rescuing.

Now they're friends, Michael and Jin. They built a raft together, they're teaching each other Korean and English, they're going to find Walt together.

The watch is in Michael's pocket and the handcuff is off Jin's wrist.

They have a new start.

Michael intends to take it.

You need friends when you're surviving on a deserted tropical island, even if there isn't a polar bear in the jungle, even if the radios work, even if there isn't a doomsday bunker, even if the Others haven't taken your son and you don't know how to find him or why they want him.

So Michael and Jin can be friends, and Michael and Sun can be friends, and Jin and Sun can fix their marriage.

And he won't be jealous, no. He won't remember stumbling upon Sun bathing. He won't dream about her and him and Walt forming a _de facto _Island family like Charlie and Claire and Aaron seem to be.

You don't think like that about your friend's wife.

Or at least, you don't act on it.

So when he found her in her garden, the first thing he told her was that Jin was safe.

And when the next morning they came out of their tent, all pleased smiles and silent stretching, he just smiled at them.

And he shook Jin's hand when the cuff came off.

But he wants to draw her.

In ink and pencil. In charcoal. In acrylics or watercolors or, hell, even crayon, he just wants to commit her body to paper. All grace and lithe, curves and angles and planes, smooth clean lines,

Smooth clean lines and a small subtle smile and a bikini that was barely there, no wonder Jin had been upset—

Instead he investigates the computer and the bunker and avoids the grieving Sayid.

Walt.

He moved the two of them to the caves even thought they were structurally unsound, because Walt had asked to live there, because Sun was already there.

He burned Walt's comic book in a fit of anger and regretted it right after, and then there was the polar bear threatening his child, and comics didn't matter, what mattered was Walt.

Walt asked Shannon to watch Vincent, and now Shannon was dead, because of a stupid mistake and a gun.

He's always hated guns.

He hadn't liked Shannon.

Shannon was spoiled and mean and stuck up and angry and lazy. Shannon sunbathed next to the crash wreckage and Shannon fought with her brother about helping and Shannon painted her toenails instead of doing anything useful.

But Sayid had loved her, Sayid _did _love her, Sayid saw something in her worth it. And when Sayid paid attention to her, Shannon had started working at it, trying to live up to what he thought of her, trying to be useful, and Michael felt badly for having dismissed her so easily.

And then Walt asked her to watch Vincent, and Michael felt badly again, because Walt saw what he hadn't, that Shannon needed to be needed, Shannon needed to be useful, Shannon needed someone to talk to, Shannon needed someone to love her, and all in all, Shannon needed the dog.

Shannon hugged Walt before the raft left.

And Shannon saw Walt in the jungle.

And Shannon died at Ana-Lucia's hands.

It was an accident, but it was an unnecessary one, and it just reinforced why Michael has always hated guns. He hated the gun in Sawyer's hands, he hated the gun in Ana-Lucia's hands, he hated the gun in Sayid's hands, and he hated the gun that had taken his son from him.

He's already lost ten years of Walt's life.

He refuses to lose the rest.

So when plan _A_ to find Walt (ditch Libby, get taken by the Others, break out from the inside, okay, it was a stupid plan but options were not many and varied) didn't work, he turned to plan _B_.

He asked questions.

There was a computer in the underground doomsday bunker, and no one else had questioned it. No one had tried to figure out what all the hardware was doing, what the blast doors were for, whether it could be MacGuyvered into a radio of some sort.

Michael Dawson is an artist and Michael Dawson is a construction worker and Michael Dawson is an architect and Michael Dawson is not a computer expert, but Michael Dawson is pretty sure these are important questions.

So he asks them, and he investigates.

And he's forced to confront the fact that he is not a computer expert, and he has no idea what he's doing, but he keeps at it anyway.

It amazes him when he thinks about it, how perfectly suited they are for group survival. All with their individual niches to fill, their roles to play. Jack is the doctor leader, Locke is the hunter gatherer, Jin is the fisherman, Sun is the herbalist, Sayid is the communications expert, and Michael is the construction work and the one who asks the questions no one else seems to want to ask.

Hurley had mumbled something about owing Walt a bunch of money from backgammon. He'd seemed upset.

But Michael is going to find Walt, and Jin is going to help, and if Sawyer recovers he'll probably pitch in too, complaining the whole time of course.

Sawyer.

Sawyer had gotten shot trying to save Walt from the Others.

Sawyer was a liar and a thief and a hoarder, Sawyer carried a gun without telling anyone, Sawyer snarked and used inappropriate nicknames and refused to respect anyone, Sawyer let himself be tortured rather than admit he didn't have Shannon's inhalers, Sawyer advocated leaving people when they got to be too much effort, Sawyer had a death wish.

Sawyer single-handedly provided a new mast to prove his right to be on the raft, Sawyer told him he had the patience of a saint, Sawyer risked his life to recover the rudder, Sawyer wore his lungs out yelling for Jin, Sawyer dug a bullet out of his own shoulder with his bare hands, Sawyer got shot trying to save Walt.

Michael isn't sure whether he hates Sawyer or admires him.

Libby had said that Sawyer was "scared", and that was about right, but scared of what?

Sawyer was scared and Michael was panicked and Jin was their rock.

Jin was as calm as was humanly possible to be. Jin dove in after Sawyer when he was shot. Jin alerted them to the tail section survivors (maybe that wasn't such a good thing…) Jin stood up to Ana-Lucia's bull with no more than a word or two of English. Jin told Michael he would find Walt.

Jin is bonding with Eko, and that's odd.

Jin barely speaks English and Eko barely speaks, but they're bonding, becoming friends, had gone to get Michael together.

Eko had also saved Sawyer, completely against Ana-Lucia's orders.

Michael has decided that Eko is a good ally to have.

Eko is a good ally to have. Libby is insightful. Bernard is mostly concerned about Rose, but he seems an overall good guy. Cindy is…

Cindy was…

Ana-Lucia is angry and scared and determined to keep control even if it means violence. Ana-Lucia trained a gun on Sayid and threatened to shoot her own allies if they disobeyed her.

Michael hates guns.

Michael is pretty sure he doesn't like Ana-Lucia much either.

_You gonna shoot me? Then shoot me._

Jack seems to have forgiven her for Shannon's death and for Sayid being tied up and threatened, and that bothers Michael.

He and Jin and Sawyer won't forget so easily. They'll keep an eye on her.

He can't get over that.

Of all the crash survivors, Jin and Sawyer were the last two he would have thought would've become his friends. But they are, in a way he can't even begin to understand or define. Building the raft together, launching together, surviving Walt's kidnapping together, surviving Ana-Lucia together—it bonded them to one another.

And so Jin's wife is most definitely off-limits.

Michael knows this.

Michael accepts this.

But it doesn't keep Michael from wishing he could draw the three of them together, him and Sun and Walt, an Island family.

But it will never be.

The best he can hope for is to get Walt back safe, and that's more than enough to hope for.

He needs his son back.

He's going to get his son back.

He can be a good father.

He _can_.

He will be.

He will.

The computer screen has changed.

The hell?

**Hello?**

Well, why not? He tentatively presses a key and is surprised when the letter appears on the screen. Locke had said it was impossible to type before the last four minutes; had even demonstrated. But the letters appear smoothly on the screen as Michael types.

**>: Hello?**

A pause, and he wonders if this is all some elaborate joke. That damned film hasn't convinced him of the need to put in this string of numbers every 108 minutes, and now without him doing a thing it's become possible to use the computer to communicate. But with who? Or is he communicating at all?

**Who is this?**

He considers, but can't see any harm in answering. Maybe it's a complex program already in the computer, maybe it's really someone on the other end of some bizarre instant message program, but he doesn't see any harm.

**>: This is Michael. Who is this?**

The pause this time is longer, and his thoughts start drifting again. Like whoever's on the other end is going to have any idea who 'Michael' is. But what else was he supposed to put in? 'Michael Dawson, age 41, artist/architect, originally from New York, now located on Craphole Island'?

Then the answer comes back, and his world ends.

**Dad?**


End file.
